Songs 9

¹Who can resist th’ Almighty arm

that made the starry sky?

Or who elude the certain glance

of God’s all‐seeing eye?

²From him no cov’ring vails our crimes;

hell opens to his sight;

And all Destruction’s secret snares

lie full disclos’d in light.

³Firm on the boundless void of space

he pois’d the steady pole,

And in the circle of his clouds

bade secret waters roll.

⁴While nature’s universal frame

its Maker’s pow’r reveals,

His throne, remote from mortal eyes,

an awful cloud conceals.

⁵From where the rising day ascends,

to where it sets in night,

He compasses the floods with bounds,

and checks their threat’ning might.

⁶The pillars that support the sky

tremble at his rebuke;

Through all its caverns quakes the earth,

as though its centre shook.

⁷He brings the waters from their beds,

although no tempest blows,

And smites the kingdom of the proud

without the hand of foes.

⁸With bright inhabitants above

he fills the heav’nly land,

And all the crooked serpent’s breed

dismay’d before him stand.

⁹Few of his works can we survey;

these few our skill transcend:

But the full thunder of his pow’r

what heart can comprehend?